Where Do You Want To Go Today?

In “Where Do You Want To Go Today?” Lisa Nakamura chronicles attempts by advertisers to extinguish or moderate racial issues through the use of the internet.

Nakamura starts out describing a commercial that claims that on the internet there are no infirmities, no gender, no age – only minds. It concludes by saying that (the internet) is uninfluenced by the rest of it (pg 4). Nakamura takes issue with the “rest of it” portion of the commercial. She states that the “rest of it” is racial and ethnic difference. The commercial seeks to bolster the claim that the internet will break down the wall of racial and social oppression. She goes on to quote many other similar commercials that make her point.

This article was written in the late 1990’s. It is very important to note that this was the time when the internet was coming of age. The advertising campaigns illustrated what the Chairmen of the Federal Reserve at the time referred to as “”irrational exuberance”. People were just starting to see the power the internet had, but were still unable to put things into perspective. Why else were internet companies with no hope of ever turning a profit trading with the like of General Electric, Phillip Morris, and Alcoa. We really didn’t have a grasp on things and were not able to make insinuations about “the rest of it”. The article has many of the trappings of McPherson’s article. Present in both are the ideas of the cyber-self being something other than your true being.

Nakamura draws an interesting connection between colonialism and tourism. The allusions made me put down the paper and think about what she meant, but she did not really clear up the issue. Since she didn’t elaborate I will. I see tourism as a powerful tool for understanding, tolerating, and celebrating other races, religions, and ethnicities. Colonialism was also a force for progress but it came at the expense of race, religion, and ethnicities.

I may have been successful at getting my arms around what Nakamura is talking about if I was able to actually see the commercials she refers to. At times it was hard to really understand what she meant and she made things more confusing by referring to other obscure commercials that I have never seen. I lived through this period of time, and I have to say that the sentiment held by the people on the cutting edge of internet technology was quite different from the average person. We didn’t understand the internet and they had wild eye notions (like what Nakamura details) that were ridiculous. I postulate that it is silly to think that the internet will deliver us into some post-ethnic utopia. It is another clear example of hopeful people irresponsibly looking for a magic bullet to solve the challenges of race and racism.